


In The End

by AmandaCritelliWestphal



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, I promise a happy ending, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 19:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6532564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmandaCritelliWestphal/pseuds/AmandaCritelliWestphal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, it all comes down to one grainy picture from a diner and a particularly nosy reporter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The End

**Author's Note:**

> So I was spitballing with @iammaryanne about the new update and our excitement and our worries. And then this happens. And she gets lots of credit, because it wouldn't have happened without her! 
> 
> Also, I haven't written fic for YEARS. Like, LiveJournal fic exchange communities for House and CSI and X-Files years. So please bear with me, and thank you ngozi for providing such irresistible inspiration.

In the end, it all comes down to one grainy picture from a diner and a particularly nosy reporter.

The Falcs have just won their seventh game in a row, and Jack’s hat trick this last game means he’s feeling pretty damn good. He's playing well, establishing himself as Jack Zimmermann and not as Bad Bob’s Son, and he's been (secretly, so very secretly) dating Bittle since about a day and a half after graduation. He's happy, happier than he's felt in many years. 

So when Georgia pulls him aside, he doesn't think twice before closing her office door behind him, at her request. When she shows him an article titled “Jack Zimmermann Off the Market?” he sinks down into the chair opposite her desk. It's by some third-rate sports blogger; he doesn't have a press pass and Jack doesn't even recognize his name. But there on his blog are pictures. Jack and Bittle, crappy quality like a cell camera zoomed in too much, but undeniably them, out to breakfast at the diner around the corner from Jack’s apartment. Jack knows exactly when that picture was taken, and knows eating breakfast with bed-head at 7 in the morning with Bittle would be a tad hard to play off.

But there are more pictures, spanning a few months. Jack and Bittle outside his building in the rain. On a run in the park, Bittle in the lead and throwing a look back over his shoulder, caught mid-chirp. Bittle looking mad, hands in the air, as he complains about something. Bittle just looking, staring up into Jack's face likenit's the moon. And in every picture, Jack’s expression is soft, open. Loving. He cringes, sitting there in Georgia’s office, because knowing that someone has caught him looking at Bittle like that feels like a violation. 

“How did he get all these?” he asks Georgia, his voice flat and his heart pounding. Georgia is the only one in the organization who knows about him and Bitty. It was kind of hard to keep it from her when they were with his parents after graduation and he came running back after kissing Bitty, face red and eyes still wide, texting all through dinner.

“So that first one. We think it all started there? And he just dug into it. It's pretty easy to see from Eric’s Twitter that the others line up with occasions when he was in town.”

“So he was following us. He watched Bitty’s Twitter and then followed us?” Jack felt cold, and angry, and like his chest was collapsing inwards.

“I need to know what you want to do, Jack. It may just be a low traffic blog, but with the pictures, if anyone with more clout picks this up, we need a response. Or do you want to get out ahead of it?”

“Ahead of-” Jack cuts himself off. “No. I need to think. I need to go home right now and think,” he says, having a harder and harder time regulating his breaths. His chest is burning with the effort of suppressing his panicked breathing.

“We really need an answer now, so we can plan-” Georgia starts.

“No!” Jack forces out, pushing himself out of his seat. “Not right now. Tomorrow.” He turns and briskly walks out of the office. Out of the building. Keeps walking until he realizes he's running, and then he's panting for breath and only a block away from his apartment. He goes inside, locks the door, and sits on the floor of his entryway, in the dark, until he stops shaking.

 

Tomorrow is too late. He's finishing up at morning practice, trying to leave unnoticed when a reporter calls out to him.

“Jack! Do you have any comments regarding reports that you are in a relationship with one of your ex-teammates from Samwell?”

Jack takes a deep breath and tries to calm his hammering heart. Some of the Falcs are in hearing range and also stop-a few bothering to look busy, but a couple blatantly watching the altercation. Jack is panicking, and he puts on his very best “dealing with the press” face while clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Eric Bittle is a good friend and yes, my ex-teammate. But he's just a friend. I think this specific blogger had a little too much free time and a little too much imagination.”

Jack forces himself to walk away like nothing just happened. Like he didn't just lie about the best thing in his life. He showers and goes home, and says not a single thing to any of his teammates.

 

He calls Bitty when he gets home. He should have called him yesterday, but he just couldn't do it. 

“Hi, sweetheart! How was practice? Did you eat yet? And those shakes do NOT count, Mr. Zimmermann, so don't even try it.”

“Bittle,” Jack says, and then goes quiet. He hasn't called Bitty Bittle since they started seeing each other. Bitty must realize this, too.

“Jack? Honey, what's wrong?”

“We were seen. There are pictures.” Jack's voice is dull, lacking affect, and across the line, he hears Bitty inhale sharply.

“Are you okay?”

“I am pretty far from okay right now, Bittle,” Jack snaps out, emotions finally colliding and feeling shame and frustration and anger. “Georgia thinks the guy watched your Twitter to see when you would be in town. He's got pictures from MONTHS ago, and they are on the internet, and I got the question from a real reporter after practice today.”

Bitty is quiet a moment, and when he speaks Jack can barely hear him over the sound of his own ragged breathing.

“What did you tell the reporter, Jack? What did he ask you?” Bitty’s voice is small and timid, and Jack swallows down the bile rising in his throat.

“I told him we played together at Samwell. And that we’re friends. And that the blogger has an overactive imagination.” He pretends not to hear Bitty sniff. He can't acknowledge that he made Bitty cry, not right this second with everything he's worked for falling down around him.

After a moment, Bitty responds.

“Okay. I need to know something, Jack, and I'm sorry if this is a bad moment for it, but we’ve talked about this before, kind of. About us not hiding. About deflecting the question, but not lying about it if it came up. Is that no longer the plan, then? Because I kind of feel like you just did the exact opposite.”

“Bittle. It's so early in the season still. All of that, that was for after this season, maybe even the next. We were supposed to be DISCREET, Bittle. No telling anyone, no tweeting about me, no mentioning me in your vlog. I am not ready to be out, Bittle! We aren't even close to playoffs yet! I am finally making a space for myself here as someone other than “The Other Zimmermann, the screwed up one”. I can't afford for this to happen now!” Jack is out of breath, frantic and aware that he is screwing things up but unable to stop himself.

“So what does that mean, Jack? I mean. You've already told the press I'm not your boyfriend. Do we continue how we’ve been and just be better at hiding? Because I don't know how I could have done better, Jack. I never mentioned I was visiting anyone other than my friend. I never mentioned your name in any relation to us being together. Lord, Chowder and Lardo still have no clue! I don't know what else I could do to be more in the closet for you, Jack,” Bitty finishes sadly. 

Jack thinks back to the pictures. How Bittle is right-but for the way Jack is looking at him in most of them, they could easily just be two good friends hanging out. But Jack’s expressions are too easy to read, and once he let his feelings for Bitty out there was no way to keep from looking like a lovestruck fool.

“Eric,” Jack says, softly now. 

“No,” says Bitty. “No, if you're planning what I think you are, I need you to not call me that.” Bitty is openly crying now.

“I just can't right now, Bittle,” Jack says, resignedly. “We can't.”

 

Two months later, Jack is still a mess. As hard as it was to be in a closeted relationship, it's even harder to be in the closet alone without Bitty. Without his texts, and their stolen moments, and the warm knowledge that he was loved for reasons completely removed from hockey. He was incredibly lucky, he felt, that the story never gained any traction and his denial was the end of it, but he scores erratically, and it's obvious to everyone that he's in some sort of slump. The lines get switched up and he's on the bench more often. There are looks from his coaches and teammates that he pretends not to notice. 

He Skypes his mother eleven weeks after he breaks up with Bitty.

“Maman,” is all he gets out before feeling the tears rise up. “Maman, I had to. I couldn't have both, and I picked wrong, I picked WRONG and I'm sorry,” he cries.

“Jack, breathe. Breathe honey, I'm going to count for you, okay? In two three four, out two three four. In two three four, out two three four. Keep breathing, and try to tell me what happened.”

So he does. He starts with what she already knows, that he and Bitty had been together. Had been happy. Had gotten too comfortable, complacent. Had forgotten how to hide, and had been caught. And how instead of standing up for himself and his relationship, he had thrown away the best thing in his life for what he THOUGHT was the best thing. How being in the NHL was his dream, but how being with Bitty was better than anything he's done so far, and what what he supposed to do now, because he gave up Bitty for hockey and now his hockey has gone to shit and everything is shit without Bitty with him for it and what should he do, please maman, tell me what I should do.

Alicia’s heart is aching for her son. Her sweet, complex, sometimes completely stupid son. And it aches for Bittle too, for the young man who loved her son so fiercely, who for a brief time made her boy happier and more peaceful than she’d ever seen him. 

“Jack, my love. I love you very much, and nothing you could do will ever change that. I want you to answer me this: if you could do anything with your life, what would it be?”

Jack was quiet a moment, than answered.

“I'd play the best hockey I could and I'd have Bitty with me for it.”

“Then you need to have a couple conversations, Jack. And you need to do it right, for Eric and for yourself.”

 

Jack and Bitty fidgeted in Georgia's office, waiting for a representative from PR and the Falcs head coach to join them, a beautiful peanut butter fudge pie on her desk. She raised an eyebrow at Jack, who smiled weakly and said,

“Peanut butter has protein.”

 

In the beginning, it all came down to one grainy picture from a diner and a particularly nosy reporter. In the end, there are no less than twelve reporters, and Jack is sweating, nervous and ready to begin.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today. A few months ago, some photos were posted online of me. You each have been given copies. When I was asked about these pictures initially, I panicked, and I lied. I said that the otheran in the pictures is my friend and ex-teammate. That is true. I'm incredibly lucky to have him as my friend. He made me a better hockey player, and he's made me a better person. And I love him very much.” 

Jack's phone on the table in front of him lets out a loud noise not unlike a bird. He looks down and laughs.

“My boyfriend says that maybe that wasn't clear enough for you.”


End file.
